September was a quiet month on this newsletter front, and I have reached a point in my life where I am okay with that, welcoming even, the expansion and contraction of rituals and seasons where sometimes things flow and other times they just don't. Thank you for being a part of this unfolding newsletter.
I have been meditating on the themes of expansion and contraction a lot lately, and as I have been seeing an extraordinary life coach the past month, he shared with me an interesting meditation. He described that a bee is drawn to the nectar of a flower only when it is open… accepting. From here, the bee can collect vital nutrients for the beehive while pollinating the flower for its own reproduction. When the flower is closed, the bee can't commune. When I envision the opening flower, I know that I am being asked to embrace each new day, and each new season, with total acceptance. Only in this state, will we draw in the people, places, and opportunities that are meant to be the pollinators of our lives.
Right now, I find myself in a period of immense expansion. Launching Mineral Milk (Mammal's first product), receiving exciting writing opportunities, growing my doula offerings and related workshops- it's all been incredibly exciting, yet at times, overwhelming. Why is it that when expansion arrives after a season of intense contraction, we sometimes struggle to feel that we deserve it?
Expansion requires a new vibration, a stepping up and into an evolved reality, a new version of self, a shedding of the tight-fitting skin that used to fit so comfortably and a plunge into the waters of the unfamiliar… waters where you can't quite see the bottom. Expansion.
For me, so much of last year centered around contraction. And in full transparency, it needed to. I needed the permission to slip away in solitude, to retreat into the darkness of my being, to grieve the loss of many things in isolation, to feel nothing, to feel everything, to travel on an inward journey so sacred and so necessary that I could only go it alone.
In yoga, there is a core sutra, “sthiram sukham asanam”, that represents the divine balance between effort and ease, strength and flow, and beckons us to bring each of these elements into every yoga asana... contraction and expansion. These are two necessary sides that make up the whole, much like yin and yang. The seemingly opposed ideas actually rely upon one another, like darkness and light, in that we wouldn't know the light without the shadow.
When the birth portal unveils new life, creation is pushed from the womb through the tight canal of contraction before landing in the expansiveness of a new reality. We need the contraction as a necessary part of growth- growth that will stretch us into a new version of self that can better hold what lies on the other side.
Since the beginning, one of Mammal's core mission statements has been “when we exhale, nature inhales”. This simple statement serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of all beings, of all seasons, of all waves, of all expressions. The necessity that one side brings to the other. Wherever you are on your own journey, and whether this newsletter finds you in a stretching expansion or necessary contraction, the next expression of life will come, and later, it will go again. May we learn to hold space for each of these seasons with open arms and petals spread wide, sharing the nectar.
